From Delusional and Desperate
Dean Clay Miller, Jr., 39, didn’t know how long he’d been running or where he was headed. He’d been using methamphetamine for the past three weeks, and the day before, he’d taken his parents’ 42-inch plasma TV while they were attending a wedding. After stealing from his parents, Miller, on probation for earlier crimes, had no place to go.Methamphetamine, known on the street as crank, speed, ice, or go-fast, works on the brain to produce a dangerous mixture of euphoria, paranoia, irritability and aggression.High now on the drug, Miller was exhibiting all its worst effects. Paranoid that the dealer who sold the last “ball” of white powder to him earlier that night meant to kill him, he wandered through the quiet, upscale Pocatello, Idaho, neighborhood, a special-ops knife tucked under his arm. On that night, September 24, 2007, Miller was running from imagined enemies, hiding in a stand of junipers. Down the street, he saw a car with the headlights on. Miller ran again, believing his enemies were in pursuit. Jogging through yards and over fences, he came to a pretty yellow house in a shiny new development.
He tried a side door into the garage with a gloved hand—it was unlocked. He crept in and entered the house through a laundry room. To his left was a child’s bedroom. He peeked in and saw a small boy sleeping. Miller moved on into the living room. What he needed, he decided, was a gun.
He found the stairs to the basement, removed his shoes, to be quiet, and looked out the windows for imagined enemies. Then he returned to the main level. Near the top of the stairs was the master bedroom—and a couple sleeping. He sneaked in and rummaged through their closet. There, in a camouflage case, he discovered what he’d been looking for: a shotgun.
Something stirred Ana Mandziara awake in the middle of the night. Kade, the baby, lay in his crib under a gauzy canopy on Robert’s side of the bed, sleeping peacefully.
Ana opened her eyes and saw the silhouette of a stranger crawling across the floor near her bed. She gasped. The intruder brought a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
He stood and pointed a shotgun at her face. Numb with terror, Ana elbowed Robert, her husband, lying next to her. The six-footer awoke. Light from the street lamps filtered through the high-arched window above the baby’s crib, dimly illuminating the room.
The intruder swung the shotgun and aimed at Robert. Instinctively, Ana looked away. Nobody spoke.
The tall, rangy Miller told them to be quiet. Then he shut the bedroom door and stood at the foot of their bed with the gun.
Nine months earlier, Robert and Ana Mandziara had moved to Pocatello, Idaho, from Los Alamos, California. Robert had been offered a great new job at the local Toyota dealer as a sales manager. The small city, with its quaint downtown and picture-perfect farmlands nearby, was so different from what the native Californians were accustomed to. California prices had been straining their budget, and Ana was concerned about violent crime near their old neighborhood, especially since there was a prison not far away.
They bought a home in the foothills with views of snow-capped mountains, and soon got to know their neighbors—the Gregans on one side, a retired police officer on the other. A couple just down the street, Dale and April Hatcher, became friends. They barbecued, shopped and held yard sales together.
All in all, Pocatello seemed like the perfect spot for Robert and Ana to raise their four-year-old son, Ayden, seven-year-old daughter, Bayleigh, and the new baby. Life there felt peaceful and secure.
Years earlier, even before they were wed, Robert and Ana had begun a discussion that would continue throughout their marriage: What would they do if they were ever in a situation of real threat? Each time they saw a news story about victims who hadn’t tried to save themselves from harm, they talked about how they would have handled things differently.
Robert was adamant. He’d sacrifice his own life, if necessary, to keep his family safe. He’d given Ana explicit instructions about what she was to do: “Run. Get to safety and get help. Don’t look back. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
The baby woke up and started to cry. The intruder kept his eye on Robert. “Do you work in the morning?” he asked. Robert said yes. “How many guns are in the house?” Robert told him about a rifle in the garage, thinking it was best to tell the truth about anything the man might discover for himself.
Pacing back and forth between the master bathroom and the walk-in closet, the intruder was agitated, restless. He demanded to know how much money they had in their savings account. About $3,500, Robert told him.
Miller swore. “Don’t you lie to me,” he added, again threatening them with the gun.
The baby began to wail louder, and the intruder grew irritated. Miller’s movements were jerky, his demeanor increasingly hostile. “What does he need?” he asked. “Make him stop.”
Ana conjured the sound of a shotgun blast in her imagination. She tried to dispel the gruesome notion from her head and pulled the old purple quilt up as far as she could to cover herself. And she prayed. One thing she was sure of, her husband was looking for a chance to make good on his promise to save his family. She didn’t know what scared her more—that Robert might, at any moment, make his move or that he wouldn’t get the chance.
The intruder let Robert get up from the bed, walk to the crib, pick up their crying infant and lay him in Ana’s arms. Robert was aware of the man tracking his every move until he lay down again beside his wife. At first too paralyzed by his own fear to consider his options, Robert started thinking of how he could rescue his family from the gunman.
Survival Instinct
“Okay, this is the game plan,” said the intruder: They would wait together until morning, then go to their bank, withdraw all their funds and give the money to him.Robert figured there was little chance this guy would leave witnesses after he got the money. He watched as the man, talking in spurts, paced to the window and pulled aside the curtain and crib canopy to peer at the street and then strode back to the master bathroom.
Robert felt his wife tap him on the leg, and he understood. She was on board with their agreement. It was time. Robert sat up in bed—a better position from which to move quickly. The intruder didn’t appear to notice. Robert waited for the gunman to stop at the window and again pull back the curtain and canopy to peer at the street. Taking advantage of this momentary distraction, Robert jumped out of bed and, with every ounce of strength, swung his fist into the gunman’s face.
The startled intruder stumbled—but didn’t go down.
Ana had gotten a firm grip on the baby, knowing there would be no second chances—and no time for second thoughts. When Robert leaped out of bed, so did she, clutching the quilt and the little one in her arms. She dashed out the bedroom door, down the hall and into the street.
Once outside, she screamed as she never knew it was possible to scream. The sound frightened even her. She hoped Dale Hatcher would hear her. Dale had guns. But more important, he was smart and careful in how he used them. If anyone could help her husband and her two older children get out of the house alive, he could.
“Dale!” she screamed, hoping that her neighbor would hear. She couldn’t risk running all the way to the Hatchers’ house—she had to get to a phone. Instead Ana turned to the house next door, still screaming, “Dale! April! Somebody, please. Help!”
The gunman threw Robert against the wall. The young father charged back at him. They struggled for control of the weapon, shoving and stumbling around the room. They crashed into a lamp and knocked it over. He was stunned at the strength of the tall intruder, who kept coming at him and pounding him. Robert was six-feet, 205 pounds, and this guy was tossing him around like he was a kid. He realized the gunman was probably high on drugs. As the fight went on and on, it seemed no one was coming to help.
A dresser crashed to the floor. Baby items scattered and broke as the two men struggled, but Robert barely noticed. He twisted and turned, giving the shotgun barrel a quick jerk, and forcing the intruder back against a dresser. Robert took control of the weapon. Believing he would now overpower the intruder, Robert swung the gun by its barrel in a wide arc and clubbed the man on the right side of his head. The intruder stumbled backward into a corner but still didn’t go down. The gun flew out of reach.
The struggle had bought Ana valuable time. Now Robert bolted out of the bedroom. He saw the front door hanging wide open and raced through it, not knowing where Ana had gone. He turned right, next door to the home of the retired police officer.
It took only a moment to cover the distance between their houses, and Robert found the ex-cop already outside his front door. Ana must have wakened him. But she wasn’t there. Neither were the kids. A horrifying thought hit him. What if Ana hadn’t gotten the two older kids out? “Call 911,” Robert told his neighbor, explaining that he had to go back.
Ana had turned in the opposite direction when she ran out of the house, to the neighbors on the other side, the Gregans. She pounded on the door and screamed for help. “Let me in! Let me in!”
As Ana touched the knob, John Gregan opened the door. Between sobs, Ana told the retired couple about the intruder and that, she believed, her husband might still be fighting or held hostage with their two kids.
Linda Gregan took the old patchwork quilt that Ana had wrapped around herself and the baby and gave her a purple velour bathrobe. John grabbed his cell phone and called 911. He looked at the clock. It was 3:01 a.m.
Finally, the 911 dispatcher picked up but told him, “Hold on.” It was probably seconds, but it seemed like forever before she came back to him.
When she heard the story, the dispatcher instructed Gregan to take Ana to the room farthest from her own house, turn out all the lights and stay away from windows.
The Gregans led Ana to their bedroom. She huddled in their walk-in closet and prayed that her husband and children were safe. The baby in her arms wouldn’t stop crying.
Plan of Attack
Robert was back at his house in seconds. He planned to get his rifle and ammunition from the garage. But as he approached, he saw the intruder enter the garage from the laundry room. Then he saw his friend and neighbor, Dale Hatcher, running down the street, carrying a pistol. Robert knew that Dale was an expert marksman and owned several guns. He told Dale he couldn’t get to his rifle in the garage because the intruder was there.Dale ran back to his own house, got a shotgun and tossed it to Robert. Now the two friends made a plan. They would trap the man inside the garage so he couldn’t get back into the house, where Robert’s kids might still be. They’d hold him until police arrived. While Robert covered the garage doors, Dale circled around front, intending to cut the intruder off at the laundry room door.
It had been a slow night at the Pocatello Police headquarters. With the sergeant on vacation, Cpl. Trent Whitney, 35, an 11-year veteran of the force, was in charge. Whitney walked over to the dispatch center to tell them if they needed him, he’d be out back cooking his dinner. He’d fired up the grill to cook some salmon.
“We have a 911 coming in,” said one of the two dispatchers. The dispatcher’s tone told Whitney it was serious. A second call raised the flag from serious to urgent. Both calls were about events occurring on Sonoma Street in the Satterfield district. Details were sketchy: One dispatcher reported there were two men out on the street with firearms. And people were yelling. Whitney and his team of four officers grabbed their gear, raced to their squad cars and headed for Satterfield.
Because John and Linda Gregan’s bedroom faced away from the street, Ana had no idea what was going on in her house. She hadn’t heard sirens, but at least she hadn’t heard gunshots. John again called 911, to find out what was keeping the police.
Meanwhile, Robert commanded the garage doors with the shotgun. Dale, pistol in hand, entered his friend’s house. Because the floor plan was the same as his own, he found his way easily in the dark, moving quickly across the foyer, past the living room and then left into the laundry room. He stood at the door, knowing there were three steps down to the garage level. In one motion, he turned the doorknob and switched on the lights. The gunman was crouching on the floor behind a bench, pointing the gun in Dale’s direction.
“Don’t move,” said the intruder, “or I’ll take your legs off.”
Dale knew he should take cover, but something told him to hold his ground. He raised his .45-caliber pistol. “Drop the shotgun or I will shoot you,” he said. Neither man blinked. The gunman laid his weapon at his side. He stood and put his hands up, then started backing away to the far side of the garage, toward the door. But Robert stood ready, shotgun in hand, just outside, covering all possible exits.
Dale moved in and picked up the intruder’s weapon. Then the man did something unexpected. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a four-inch black tactical knife and held the blade to his wrist.
“Go ahead and kill me,” he said. And he refused to drop the knife.
Robert spotted the police cars streaming into the neighborhood and quickly filled in Corporal Whitney on who was in the garage. Then he led the corporal and the other fully armed officers to the scene.
Through the windows in the retractable garage doors they could see the intruder and Dale Hatcher, holding a handgun on him. Whitney yelled to alert Dale that he was a police officer and he was coming in.
Then Robert punched the code into the keypad of the garage door opener—and the doors began to slowly rise.
“Don’t move,” Whitney yelled. He stepped forward with his assault rifle while Robert stood guard behind him. “Put the knife down.”
Instead, the man lifted the knife to his neck and shoved the point up to his jugular. Whitney then told Dale to exit through the garage door. Dale carefully backed out.
With the cops in command, Robert went looking for Ana. In the confusion, he’d heard, erroneously as it turned out, that his older children were already out of the house.
While Robert was looking for Ana, Dale and another neighbor, Mike Farrer, went into the Mandziara house through the front door. Inside, they found the two older children in their bedrooms. The four-year-old boy was still asleep. Dale checked the other bedroom and found seven-year-old Bayleigh. She was awake. She’d heard her daddy fighting but had stayed put. Dale assured her that everyone was now safe, and he and Mike carried the children to Dale’s house.
In the Gregans’ home, John was still on the phone with 911. Then, at last, he relayed the words to Ana from the 911 operator that she’d prayed she would hear.
It was over. Robert was all right.
Linda took the baby, and Ana raced out the door. Police-car lights were flashing, and the neighborhood was lit up like a mad carnival. For a split second, she didn’t know where to look.
Then there he was, in the Gregans’ front yard, running toward her. She threw herself into her husband’s arms, and they just stood there, holding each other and sobbing.
“The kids are okay,” he said. “It’s over. Everyone’s okay.”
It was an hour before police were able to end the standoff with Dean Clay Miller. He continued to hold the knife to his jugular, alternating between threatening to kill himself and asking the cops to shoot him. Finally, when one officer created a distraction, another officer got close enough to hit Miller with a Taser.
Miller was charged with burglary, kidnapping, assault with intent to commit robbery and methamphetamine possession. There is also a deadly weapon enhancement to the charges.
As it happened, Pocatello had just hired a new chief of police, who was on his way to Idaho from Orlando when the invasion occurred. His first question was, “How many are dead?”
None, he was told.
“Well, that’s a surprise,” he said, reflecting on the scope of the intrusion and standoff. “Where I come from, usually two or three people die.”
Captain Steve Findley credits Robert and Ana Mandziara’s quick thinking and courage for their family’s survival.
How to Keep Intruders Out of Your Home
Tips from the Pocatello Police Department for keeping your home secure.1. Never assume "It can't happen here."
2. Secure all windows and doors before you go to bed.
3. Lock the outside garage doors, not just the inside door to the house. An intruder can work unnoticed inside if he gains access.
4. Install motion lights outside to deter intruders.
5. Have a plan and rehearse it, especially if you have children.
6. Keep pepper spray next to your bed. Aim for the eyes.